Everyone - pilgrims who had come for Passover, priests, Pharisees - everyone was satisfied that brisk trade was going on around the Jerusalem Temple. The voices of the sacrificial animals drowned out the hymns? Well, what can be done, at least...
Everyone - pilgrims who had come for Passover, priests, Pharisees - everyone was satisfied that brisk trade was going on around the Jerusalem Temple. The voices of the sacrificial animals drowned out the hymns? Well, what can be done; at least there is always a chance to buy those animals. Surely a pilgrim would not lead them from home, which could be hundreds of kilometers away... The money changers, bargaining with clients, argue and curse so loudly that it is disgraceful? Sad, of course, but denarii have to be exchanged for drachmas and back again... Strictly speaking, no one approves of all this noise in the temple courts, but everyone puts up with it as an unavoidable evil, a kind of tribute to eastern temperament.
Strictly speaking, devout Jews endured all this not so much from indifference as because they were waiting tensely for the coming of the Messiah. Through the prophets the Lord more than once angrily rebuked Israel for its lack of reverence. The words quoted by Jesus, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers," belong to the prophet Jeremiah and were spoken 600 years before the events described in the Gospel. But in Israel there was a conviction that the coming Messiah would order the service in the Temple and, so to speak, "put things in order." In carrying out this cleansing, the Lord acts precisely as the One long-awaited Messiah. This is exactly how the Jews perceive it, and therefore they demand a sign from Him.
Yet one cannot fail to notice that the dialogue between the Jews and the Lord takes place in raised tones: the Jews react to Christ's action with a certain hostility. This happens because the Lord calls things by their names. His words, "Do not make My Father's house a house of trade," do not fit at all within the framework of tolerance and indulgence toward lawlessness and irreverence. It is important to see this, because in our own time, when someone tells us about what we softly call "disorders" in our spiritual and church life, we often react the same way the Jews did then, in April of A.D. 27. Fear and uncertainty about God's love make this kind of truth very offensive to people. It is useful to remember this and notice it in ourselves, so as not to become like those Jews.
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2:14 Oxen, and sheep, and doves - Used for sacrifice: And the changers of money - Those who changed foreign money for that which was current at Jerusalem, for the convenience of them that came from distant countries.
2:15 Having made a scourge of rushes - (Which were strewed on the ground,) he drove all out of the temple, (that is, the court of it,) both the sheep and the oxen - Though it does not appear that he struck even them; and much less, any of the men. But a terror from God, it is evident, fell upon them.
2:17 Psa 69:9.
2:18 Then answered the Jews - Either some of those whom he had just driven out, or their friends: What sign showest thou? - So they require a miracle, to confirm a miracle!
2:19 This temple - Doubtless pointing, while he spoke, to his body, the temple and habitation of the Godhead.
2:20 Forty and six years - Just so many years before the time of this conversation, Herod the Great had begun his most magnificent reparation of the temple, (one part after another,) which he continued all his life, and which was now going on, and was continued thirty - six years longer, till within six or seven years of the destruction of the state, city, and temple by the Romans.
2:22 They believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said - Concerning his resurrection.
2:23 Many believed - That he was a teacher sent from God.
2:24 He did not trust himself to them - Let us learn hence not rashly to put ourselves into the power of others. Let us study a wise and happy medium between universal suspiciousness and that easiness which would make us the property of every pretender to kindness and respect.
2:25 He - To whom all things are naked, knew what was in man - Namely, a desperately deceitful heart.